10 quick tips to skyrocket your online conversions rate

10 quick tips to skyrocket your online conversions rate

Visitors on site? Check. Valuable product or service? Check. Soaring conversion rates? If you’re struggling to enthusiastically say “Check!” here, don’t despair – there’s a lot you can do to fix that. There’s not one concrete solution to turning your site from a lonely corner store to a thriving depot, but there are plenty of little tips and tricks out there that can steadily and efficiently get you some more paying customers. Try some of these on for size:

Make your customers feel safe. Sure, this means keep your site in a well-lit area and not wearing scary masks, but I’m more referring to having prominent “trust” logos and verifications such as Verisign so your visitors know your site is reliable.

Offer easy searching. This one’s a no-brainer. Many customers will visit your site knowing beforehand what they’re looking for, so if they can just type in a keyword and hop right to a product page they’ll thank you.

Keep your checkout and cart icons visible. There’s nothing worse than finding a product you want to buy and then struggling to locate the “checkout” option – imagine not being able to find the cash register in a supermarket! Having an icon at the top and bottom of the page usually is a good plan.

Suggest products to buy. While this might seem obvious, showing someone a list of similar products to the one they’re looking at makes their life easier and increases their chances of converting.

Add in product reviews. Made popular by Amazon, this strategy gives some “real world” credibility to whatever you’re selling. While whatever praise you have for your own products is great, it will have a lot more impact if your customers hear it from someone else as well.

Make sure the cart automatically saves. When your customer is still adding items to their cart, do everything in your power to ensure that they won’t accidentally hit a back button and erase all the hard-shopped items they’ve already placed in it. This functionality should be there even if they’re not “logged in” to your site. Speaking of which…

Allow customers to register at check out. This is a big one. If you’re about to purchase a shiny new whatever, and at the last minute the site asks you to “create an account then come back” chances are you’re going to punch a hole in your computer screen. Oh, and then not come back.

Don’t hide final prices. Honesty is the best policy when it comes to online business, and you’re really not fooling anyone by tacking on a “surprise” fee on the last page of your checkout. If you need to charge extra for shipping, handling, or putting little ribbons on the package, tell you customers up front.

Offer discounted or free shipping. Even better than being upfront about your fees is having no fees at all. Of course, not everyone can pull this off financially, but if you can swing it you’ll definitely see some happy customers returning for more in the future.

Provide follow-up details. No one likes to be left in the dark once they purchase a product. If it’s being shipped, tell them when they should expect a package. If it’s a download, give them some installation instructions. Wham.

Pretty easy to add all that stuff to your site, right? Don’t let the simplicity of all these little fixes be misleading, though – they can be the difference between a struggling online business and a booming center of virtual commerce. Start building your empire today.